Survival analysis of patients treated at oncology practices with more aggressive end-of-life practice patterns.

Authors

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Maureen Canavan

Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT

Maureen Canavan , Xiaoliang Wang , Mustafa Ascha , Rebecca A. Miksad , Timothy N Showalter , Gregory Sampang Calip , Cary Philip Gross , Kerin B. Adelson

Organizations

Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, Flatiron Health, New York, NY, Flatiron Health, San Francisco, CA, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Research Funding

Pharmaceutical/Biotech Company
This study was sponsored by Flatiron Health Inc, which is an independent subsidiary of the Roche group

Background: Despite national focus on measuring and reducing end-of-life (EOL) systemic treatment among cancer patients, recent studies show a consistently high use of systemic anticancer therapy (SACT) at the EOL, as well as a shift to more targeted therapies. A criticism of measures that focus on deceased populations is that they do not account for patients who received treatment at the same time in their disease trajectory and had a positive response to therapy. We sought to explore whether being treated at an oncologically aggressive (OA) practice (defined as higher practice-level EOL SACT treatment rates), was associated with a survival benefit among patients in six common cancer types. Methods: This survival analysis used the nationwide Flatiron Health electronic health record (EHR)-derived de-identified database. We included all adult patients with a confirmed diagnosis of metastatic disease in breast (mBC), colorectal (mCRC), renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) or pancreatic cancer (mPanc), or advanced disease in non-small cell lung (aNSCLC), or bladder cancer (aUC), between 2015 and 2019. The primary exposures were the practice-level risk-standardized 30-day EOL SACT rates calculated among decedents. The primary outcome was real-world overall survival (rwOS) among all patients. Adjusted hazard ratios (aHR) for each quintile of increasing OA EOL SACT rates (Q2-Q5) were estimated using disease-specific Cox proportional hazard models (reference: Q1), adjusting for patient and practice-level factors. Bonferroni correction was applied to account for multiple comparisons. Results: A total of 78,446 patients from 144 practices were included in the analysis with most patients seen at less OA practices (Q1-Q2). Patients seen at most OA practices (Q5) were less likely to be <65 (32.5% vs 38.9% in Q1), Black (6.3% vs 12.2%), have Medicare (5.9% vs 10.7%) or Medicaid (1.5% vs 4.1%). After adjusting for covariates, there was no statistically significant difference in rwOS between patients treated at the most (Q5) and the least OA practices (Q1; table). However, there was variation among the moderately OA practices. Patients with mPanc seen at moderately OA (Q2-Q4) had 12% to 19% lower hazards of deaths (aHR range 0.81-0.88), compared to those at the least OA practices (Q1), but these associations were not statistically significant (Bonferroni corrected p-values >0.05). Conclusions: When using rates of SACT at EOL to define OA practices, patients treated at these practices do not have improved survival.

aHRs for most OA practice quintile (Q5) compared with least OA practice quintile (Q1) by disease.

DiseaseaHR (95% confidence interval)p-value
mBC (N = 11,627)0.93 (0.76 - 1.15)0.501
mCRC (N = 15,786)0.89 (0.72 - 1.09)0.257
mRCC (N = 4,617)0.97 (0.70 - 1.34)0.845
mPanc (N = 7,349)0.86 (0.71 - 1.05)0.135
aNSCLC (N = 34,163)0.94 (0.87 - 1.02)0.119
aUC (N = 4,792)0.94 (0.69 - 1.28)0.703

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Abstract Details

Meeting

2023 ASCO Annual Meeting

Session Type

Poster Session

Session Title

Health Services Research and Quality Improvement

Track

Quality Care/Health Services Research

Sub Track

Quality Improvement

Citation

J Clin Oncol 41, 2023 (suppl 16; abstr 6562)

DOI

10.1200/JCO.2023.41.16_suppl.6562

Abstract #

6562

Poster Bd #

54

Abstract Disclosures